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Amidst all the drama around Osama bin Laden’s assassination, we shouldn’t lose sight of an important game-changing story brewing in the region, especially from an Indian perspective.

Sometime in August this year, some of the largest mining and steel companies around the world will make final bids for the exploration rights to the 1.8 billion tonne Hajigak iron ore mines in the war-torn Bamiyan province in Afghanistan.
There’s a good reason why my colleagues and I at Forbes India have been following this story very closely. So here’s the angle that’s worth tracking: 15 Indian firms are among a total of 22 firms bidding for these assets, considered to be among the biggest iron ore deposits available through an open market process. If they bid individually, they’d get swept aside by their bigger rivals, like Vale of Brazil.

So after much deliberation, our steel firms, at least five of them, are contemplating bidding as a consortium. And what’s more, the Indian government is likely to dip into its existing corpus for rebuilding Afghanistan and put up 15 percent of the acquisition cost. If the government sticks to its word, it could again be the first time that the government has supported an initiative such as this.

Now, while the concept of co-opetition, or collaborating to compete, is now widely understood, I believe this current move in Afghanistan represents a new narrative for India Inc. It’s not often that competitors in India are able to set aside their intense industry rivalries to come together for a larger cause. When we met Malay Mukherjee, the CEO of Essar Steel and one of the key architects of this consortium, he told us just how difficult it was for Indian entrepreneurs to change their prevailing mindsets. In the last decade, one such experiment—the Indian Steel Alliance—has already collapsed when Tata Steel walked out of it. So what’s changed? Quite simply, across the world, Indian players have realised the futility of being drawn into intense bidding wars for iron ore mines, particularly with the three global mining companies who control 70 percent of the iron ore reserves. So now, pushed to the wall, they’re finally coming around to the view that co-opetition perhaps does make economic sense.

Stitching together the new partnership hasn’t been easy. Fortunately, for the Indian steel industry, three key change agents have come to the forefront: Mukherjee, who worked as a senior executive for 15 years with Lakshmi Mittal’s Arcelor Mittal, Chandra Shekhar Verma, the new SAIL chairman, and V Krishnamurthy, the doyen of the Indian manufacturing industry and former SAIL chairman. They’ve been ably supported by PK Mishra, the current steel secretary.

Designing how the consortium works isn’t really that difficult. So far, while it looks like NMDC, India’s largest iron ore miner, will lead the Indian consortium, the partners will get the allocation of resources according to the investment they bring. And the NMDC-led consortium could include SAIL, Tata Steel, JSW and Essar, which is practically the majority of the Indian steel industry. This could give the Indian consortium more than a realistic change to pip the rest of the playing field.

While the public and private sector players may indeed succeed in forging an alliance, it’s the government’s role and its perceived ambivalence that needs to be watched carefully. So far, India Inc’s international expansion has largely been on its own steam. Unlike the Chinese, the Indian state, for most part, has chosen to watch from the sidelines.

This time, the steel industry is hoping that the government realises the strategic benefits of gaining access to mineral resources for an economy to maintain its trajectory of growth for the next 10 years. Without access to vital iron ore reserves, the India growth story could come to a grinding halt. If the bid goes to plan, the government could consider a long-standing decision to create a new multi-billion dollar sovereign fund that supports domestic companies to buy energy assets—oil, coal and iron ore—abroad. So far, there hasn’t been enough consensus within the government and in the public policy domain for a poor country like India to spend its monies on creating a sovereign fund to buy assets abroad, instead of using it to tackle the public welfare issues of education, health and infrastructure. Like all things in India, this is one of those larger ideological debates we tend to get locked into—without any hope of ever finding a viable solution.

On the Afghanistan bid, though, apart from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), there are three key ministries that will need to work together to make this joint bid a reality: steel, external affairs and finance. And their track record in the past of giving up turf wars to support industry action has been far from encouraging. Last week, I spoke to KV Kamath, the chairman of ICICI Bank and Infosys, who spoke of the intense frustration during his term as president of CII to get these different ministries to see eye-to-eye.

So even if private and public enterprises realise the value of such co-opetition, it may still be too much to expect the government to drop all its baggage and step up to the challenge. Of course, if you’re an optimist, it may make sense to make sense to wait for the ides of August.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Historically, Balochistan has remained a secular and tolerant society. It has remained home to Muslims belonging to all sects of Islam, Hindus and other religious minorities. It was the only province of the country which was not abandoned by the Hindu minorities at the time of Partition in 1947. For the people of Balochistan, a person’s affiliation toward another sect has always been a personal or at least a communal matter. It was only two decades back when Sunni kids used to attend Shia religious processions in different parts of Quetta. This clearly demonstrated a deliberate ignorance of the members of our society toward the scourge of sectarianism.

Sectarian harmony has always been the hallmark of the society in Balochistan. This tradition must be upheld at all costs.

Increasing sectarianism in Balochistan is not solely the result of social unrest but is a clear exhibition of bad governance. The provincial government’s inability to dismantle gropes that are targeting the members of the Hazara tribe and Shia community is highly regrettable. This issue has to be fixed only by hunting down the rogue elements within the security establishment.

Balochistan Police have enormously suffered in its operations against sectarian groups in a plenty of attacks. A lot of policemen have been killed in such assaults which the perpetrators claimed were either in response to the arrest of their supporters or as a warning to the government to stay away from the Sunni-Shia battle. Yet, the police department has not fully owned the challenge of fighting this ugly battle.

The fresh killing of six innocent civilians in an incident of rocket firing in Quetta is disturbing. It just came as a reminder that the threat of sectarianism was not over and the Hazara tribe living in Balochistan continued to remain vulnerable. It is important to understand that the bulk of Shias living in Balochistan belong to Hazara tribe. While almost every Hazara is a Shia, all Shias, on the other hand, are not Hazaras. Thus, these attacks cannot be termed as ethnically motivated. They have religious ambitions. Attacks on Shias in Balochistan mostly take place in Quetta because most of them live in the provincial capital. However, as some Shias have started to live in areas like Mastung and Bolan, the constituency of violence directed toward members of the Shia community has also gradually expanded.

It is encouraging to see that the nationalist political parties and trade unions have joined hands to condemn the killing of the members of the Hazara tribe by observing a complete shutter down strike in Quetta, Balochistan’s capital, and elsewhere in the province. There is a greater need for all the political and social stakeholders to cooperate with each other to retain the secular and tolerant qualities of this society.

Since former military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq inducted his suspicious policies of Islamization, Shias of Balochistan, like their compatriots elsewhere in the country, have enormously suffered because of his insane wave of violence. Thousands of innocent people have been butchered by underground Sunni militant groups. Over the years, no federal or provincial government prioritized the issue of uprooting sectarian violence in the country. While it is almost impossible to exterminate sectarianism itself, combating sectarian violence is still possible if the government makes it a top priority.

Baloch political parties must play a more proactive role in condemning such violent incidents inside the province and offer all possible cooperation to the members of the Shia and Hazara communities. The Hazara Democratic Party, for instance, has always backed the Baloch demands and strongly condemned the oppression and operations against the Baloch. At this critical juncture, they must be offered unqualified assurance and support from every responsible citizen of the province.

The government of Balochistan should also work on areas requiring improvement in the domain of law and order. It is pathetic that no First Investigation Report (FIR) of the shootings had been registered until the writing of this editorial. Quetta Police have claimed to have randomly detained at least ten suspects which is unlikely to genuinely address the matter itself. The provincial administration should do whatever it takes to defeat sectarianism.

A terrorist attack on members of the Hazara community in the ground and adjacent cemetery in Hazara Town of Quetta left eight dead and 15 wounded. People were taking an early morning stroll, playing sports in the ground or praying at the graves of dead relatives in the adjoining cemetery when the attack took place. Preliminary police investigation reveals it was a sectarian attack. The audacity with which this attack has been carried out boggles the mind. In a highly coordinated assault, after firing rockets from the nearby mountains, about a dozen terrorists appeared on the site in vehicles, lobbed hand grenades and started indiscriminate firing. This continued for about 20 minutes before they fled, leaving behind a trail of blood and gore. The death toll could have been much higher had this happened in an enclosed compound instead of an open ground. According to media reports, banned sectarian outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has claimed responsibility for this incident. In reaction, the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party and Hazara Democratic Party observed a shutter-down strike in Quetta.
Extremist Wahabi outfits such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba consider Shias wajib-ul-qatl (worthy of murder). The Hazaras are a Shia community straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is not the first time that they have been targeted due to their religious orientation. There is so much fanatical hatred amongst these extremist groups that it really does not matter to them if they are killing unarmed innocent people, including women and children, as long as the targeted persons fit their description of being ‘infidels’. It is alarming that, despite being banned, these outfits are operating with impunity in the length and breadth of Pakistan. Strangely, in a highly sensitive area such as Quetta, which is in the grip of an insurgency, no prior intelligence was available to law enforcement agencies about this attack. Frontier Corp and intelligence agencies have gained notoriety for their highhandedness in dealing with Balcoh activists, whom they illegally detain, torture and murder. How is it possible that they did not know of the presence of sectarian outfits and their activities in the area? Where was the police when this was happening? It is time the law enforcement agencies revamped their priorities and focused on protecting the citizens by rooting out militant sectarian networks and remaining vigilant about any such presence in their area. Otherwise, violence will not stop here. *

QUETTA (INP): Quetta city observed a shutter down on Saturday to condemn the killing of six people and injuries to 10 others in Hazara Town which had been termed an apparent sectarian attack by the locals.
The Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) and the Hazara Democratic Party (HDP) gave the strike call, which was supported by the Baloch National Party, the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf, the Awami National Party, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and traders union.
Jinnah Road, Circular Road, Shahrah-e-Iqbal, Liaquat Bazaar, Prince Road, Abdul Sattar Road, Maykangi Road, Kansi Road, Airport Road, Zarghun Road, Almo Chowk, Ispny Road, Pashtun Abad, Almdar Road, , Jinnah Town, Shahbaz Town, Hazara and small and big trading centres in other areas of the city remained closed.
Six people were killed and 10 others wounded in firing and rocket attacks in Hazara Town, Brewery Road area on Friday early in the morning when people were taking morning exercise.
A banned militant group Laskhar-e-Jhangvi had claimed responsibility of the attack. Preliminary investigations by the police have confirmed this was a sectarian incident.
Police officials said dozens of people belonging to the Hazara community were busy in taking their morning walk at around 6:30am at a ground adjacent to the Hazara Town graveyard when unidentified armed men riding two pick-ups arrived and fired three rockets and opened indiscriminate firing.
The people who went on protest and shutter down have demanded of the government to nab the culprits and save the city from such terror incidents in future.
Meanwhile, funeral prayers of those killed in the Friday ambush were offered and were laid to rest in the Hazara graveyard.
However, FIR of the incident has not been lodged because SHO Ameer Mohammad Dashti of Barvari Police Station was also injured in the assault on Friday and was under treatment in hospital.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

The remote land of Bamyan lies at the heart of Afghanistan in the midst of the Hindu Kush, far from the well-beaten tracks of the 21st century. The spirit of the great Buddhas still presides over this valley. To travel here is to discover something of an older world when merchants, pilgrims and conquerors from half of Asia passed through this area.
Bamyan lies at the crossing of ancient trade routes which traversed the Hindu Kush from north to south and east to west, linking Central Asia, India and Iran. Approaching by road you cross the bleak Shibar Pass, then pass through precipitous gorges until suddenly a lost world opens up before you...

The MQM has condemned the terrorist attack in Hazara Town area of Quetta, the capital of the Balochistan province. Members of the MQM Rabita Committee expressed grief over the death the people in the incident on Friday, and termed the attack an attempt to spreading sectarian violence in the city. They said that the people involved in killing of innocent people are enemies of Islam and humanity. They demanded of President Asif Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik to take immediate notice of the attack and take measures to stop such attacks. They condoled with family members of those who lost their lives in the attack and prayed for the early recovery of the injured.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Chief Minister said here today that targeting innocent people is a cowardice and cruel act and directed for mobilsing all resources for arrest of terrorists. He said shedding blood of innocent people is extremely dirty act and elements involve din such acts deserve no leniency. Neither would they be forgiven by AllahAlmighty now they would escape the law. Expressing sympathy with relatives of those killed Chief Minister assured them that killers of their beloved would be brought to the law they should not leave patience. Chief Minister said that injured would be provided best possible medical facilities and all expenses would be borne by provincial government and directives have been issued to Health Department in this regard. Chief Minister prayed for those killed in terrorist act and early recovery of injured persons.

QUETTA: Various political parties and trade organizations terming the killing of innocent people as against humanity have announced their support for complete shutter down strike on Saturday in Quetta.

The shutter down strike is being observed against the inhuman incidents of rocket attack and firing that took six innocent lives while 15 got injured on Friday on the call of Pakhtoonkhwa Awami Milli Party.

Central Vice President of Jamhuri Watan Party (JWP) Hajji Ashraf Kakar has said that the law and order situation in the province has become worst.

Terrorists are massacring innocent masses on daily basis through firing and bomb blasts but our government is not taking any practical measures against them.

Condemning the deaths of 6 people that died in rocket attack on Friday he said the government has failed to maintain law and order situation. He demanded the establishment of governor Rule in the province along with the arrest of responsible miscreants of this incident.

He expressed condolence to the hires of dead people and prayed for the health of injured.

The Central Vice President of Tehrik-e-Insaf Qazi Shahid, and the President of Tehrik-e-Insaf Youth Wing Khaliq Dad Noorzai also expressed their grievance on Friday’s incidents.

The President of ISF Sharif said that government has failed to maintain its writ in the province. The federal and provincial governments have failed to maintain law and order in the country they do not have any right to rule the country when they can not protect the common people from terrorists.

He appealed to the traders, political parties and masses to actively participate in the call for complete shutter down strike on Saturday and that they should close their shops in order to avoid any unfortunate incident in the province.

ISLAMABAD, May 6 (APP): The United States Embassy in Pakistan strongly deplored Friday’s indiscriminate attack in Quetta, which killed eight innocent people and injured many others.In a statement, a US embassy Spokesman said, “Our thoughts and sympathies are with the victims and their families. The senseless killing of innocent civilians is an affront to the people of Pakistan and to all humanity.”

The Spokesman said this attack underscores the threat that terrorism poses to Pakistan and all nations of the world.
“All must stand together in common purpose and take resolute action to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat terrorist organizations,” he added.

At least eight people were killed early Friday morning as unknown militants fired rockets at the people doing exercises at a soccer ground in the Hazara town of Quetta, a capital city of Balochistan province in southwest Pakistan, reported local English TV channel Express.

According to the local media reports, the attack took place at about 7:00 a.m. local time when six to eight unknown militants riding in two cars attacked the people who were doing morning exercises in a soccer ground in the city.

The militants first fired indiscriminately at the people in the ground, then fired three rockets at them, said eyewitnesses.

The attackers fled the scene after a brief fire exchange with the police. Police have cordoned off the area and the dead and injured have been shifted to nearby hospital.

Hospital sources said that some of the injured were in critical condition and the death toll could further rise.

Friday morning's incident is the third terrorist attack reported in Pakistan since the killing of the al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden in the country's northwest city of Abbottabad in an early Monday morning's operation conducted by the U.S. special task force. Pakistan Taliban (TTP) vowed to avenge the killing of bin Laden by threatening terrorist attacks in the country.

On Thursday evening, the police in the country's northwestern Dera Ismail Khan district foiled an attempt by two suicide bombers to attack a checkpoint in the district. Police fired at the two suicide bombers before they reached the checkpoint in a car laden with an estimated 120 kg of explosives. The firing caused a huge blast of the car which killed the two men inside right on the spot.

On Monday afternoon, immediately following the killing of Osama bin Laden, a blast in a mosque in the city of Charsadda in northwestern Pakistan killed four people and injured 11 others as most of them were police or police family members as the mosque is close to a police station in the city.

Pakistani Shiite Muslims gather during a road block protest in Quetta on Friday following the attack

(CNN) -- Militants in two vehicles fired a rocket and guns at people in southwestern Pakistan on Friday, leaving six dead and nine injured, a senior police official said.
The militants targeted a graveyard in Hazara area, said Muhammad Dawood Junejo, a Quetta police officer.
"Initially, they fired a rocket and then started firing on people in the graveyard," the officer said.
The officer said the incident seems to be an act of sectarian attack.
Quetta is the capital of the Balochistan province, which has had militant attacks in the past.
Last year, about 50 minority Shiites were killed when a suicide bomber struck an Al Quds rally in September.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

In his latest online Afghanistan dispatch, Jason Burke returns to Buddha-less Bamiyan and reflects on how the Taliban's act of cultural destruction marked a turning-point for the regime.

Jason Burke in Afghanistan
Observer.co.uk, Sunday 5 May 2002 12.59 BST
Article history
It is an astonishingly beautiful place. Overhead a keen, high altitude wind hauls thin streaks of cirrus across the bright, clear blue sky. To the south there are high mountains, covered in thick spring snow. Beneath them there are the rocky brown slopes of the rolling hills sliced by steep, narrow valleys that finally broaden into one plain ten miles wide and full of fields and low mud houses and slender ash trees that are painfully graceful. At dawn their leaves catch the light before anything else.
Except of course the great cliff where the Buddhas once stood. Its sandstone runs through a dozen shades of blue and pink and orange before settling on a washed out yellow. Bamiyan, the high mountain province in the centre of Afghanistan, has been famous for 1,700 years for the two statues of the Lord Buddha carved into the bluffs that dominate the valley. Last spring the Taliban dynamited both of them. It was only when standing beneath the empty cavities, the largest more than 200ft high, that you can appreciate the crime.

To those of us who had been watching the Taliban for years the destruction of the Buddhas showed that they were changing. In a sense the hardline Islamic militia's eventual demise became inevitable from that moment. I thought it was always too easy to accept the caricature of the Taliban as evil, violent misogynists who ruled by terror alone. Partly, I felt sorry for men whose lives had so obviously been ruined by war and who were trying to recreate some romantic, albeit twisted, vision of what their childhoods and lives should have been like; partly through irritation at the kneejerk Western reaction to the Taliban, who had, after all, been welcomed by many of their countrymen; and partly because I had been in Kandahar, the southern Afghan city that was their spritual and political headqaurters, when in 1998 President Clinton had sent cruise missiles to strike bin Laden's bases in the east of the country. Then the Taliban protected me from angry mobs out to avenge themselves on Westerners. I suppose I felt I owed it to them to try and understand before I condemned.

But looking at the ruins of the Bamiyan buddhas - the rubble is covered by a faded blue tarpaulin that flaps in the breeze - it was impossible to feel much sympathy for the men in the black turbans.

We now know that the influence of al'Qaeda on the Taliban leadership was critical in the decision to blow up the buddhas. Letters found in houses in Kabul show that bin Laden and other senior figures in al'Qaeda leant heavily on Mullah Mohammed Omar, the reclusive one-eyed cleric who led the Talibs, to destroy the statues despite, or rather because of, the international outrage at their plans. Ostensibly the buddhas were blown up because Islam permits no graven images. Actually it was a giant V-sign flicked at the world.

The Taliban seized Kabul and effective power in September 1996. Then they were pretty much unconcerned by the rest of the world. Afghanistan was not just the limit of their ambitions but the limit of their worldview. In long conversations with senior Talibs, even as late as 1998, it was clear that they knew where Pakistan and Iran were, had a fair idea where to find the Gulf but were very sketchy on the exact whereabouts of pretty much anywhere else.

But, by last autumn, Mullah Omar was making specific statements about Iraq and Palestine. The change was due to al'Qaeda and bin Laden.

We are now learning much more about how that happened. It had been old mujahideen commanders who had invited bin Laden back into Afghanistan and the Saudi had to launch a concerted campaign to build a relationship with the Taliban when they came to power. He did it well, but not without some difficulty.

I think the crunch point came the end of 1999 when Mullah Omar gave in to the moderates within the Taliban and successfully eradicated the opium crop - at considerable political and financial cost. Instead of the international recognition and aid that the moderates had assured him the Taliban would recieve they got sanctions and opprobrium instead. The question of bin Laden's presence in the country - described to me as a 'liability' by senior Taliban ideologues at the time - was the subject of desultory negotiations with the US and Saudi but that was all.

The moderates had the rug - no doubt it was a beautiful antique Afghan jaldar bokhar 6ft x 4ft - pulled from under them. And the hardliners decided that bin Laden and his associates were right. It was them against the world.

It took me a day to drive the winding valley that leads from Bamiyan down to the broad Shomali plains where the British and American forces have their main base. After dumping my bags on a free cot in Tent Five of Viper City and picking up an MRE ration pack I went for a run. Overhead Chinooks swung low overhead blasting the dust with their rotor blades. I ran past the British marines encampment, festooned with Union jacks and games of football, past the artillery park and on to the old Soviet-built strip. At the A-10 Tankbuster jets I turned round.

Bearded American special forces soldiers were sprint training along the scarred concrete, each holding a handgun. It was early evening. The light in Afghanistan has a hard-edged metallic quality that I have never seen anywhere else. The men and their machines stood out very sharply against the distant plain and the far off hills. To the north lay the Hindu Kush, to the west was Hazarajat and Bamiyan. I wondered if there was a point when the war could have been averted. Maybe at the time of the Taliban's opium ban. And if so, what other decisions are being taken now in Washington and London and elsewhere. And where will that mean I will be running between the jets and the howitzers in three years time.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

ECONOMIC deprivation rather than the fear of persecution is driving Afghan Hazaras to risk their lives to come to Australia, a previously secret government-commissioned report has found.
The Gillard government contracted a Kabul-based communications company to find out what people from the Afghan ethnic minority knew about the risks inherent in using people smugglers to get to Australia.
The report by Wise Strategic Communications, released under freedom of information laws, found that though the majority of Afghan Hazaras were aware of the dangers in making the treacherous journey by boat to Australia, only a few realised they also risked deportation and detention.

Wise, which conducted 50 interviews and 10 focus groups in Hazara enclaves in four Afghan provinces last year, found many respondents believed the risks of drowning and being ripped off by people smugglers were outweighed by the prospect of being accepted by Australia as refugees.
The $72,000 research discovered many Hazaras strongly believed that travelling to Australia practically guaranteed refugee status.
While the focus groups in Kabul found respondents largely rejected illegal immigration out of a sense of patriotic duty and the belief they should stay and assist the reconstruction of the country, those in poorer, less-educated areas believed leaving for Australia was a ''survival strategy'' worthy of the risk.
Of the 7668 unlawful arrivals by boat since January last year, 3306 were Afghan. In this period, only 83 have returned home - mostly voluntarily - including six Afghans.
The rejection rate for Afghan refugee claims is about 50 per cent - up from 10 per cent 18 months ago - but 70 per cent of those rejected have their refugee status confirmed on appeal.
''Lower-income classes feel their opportunities are virtually non-existent and that clandestine migration is their only option,'' the report says about those in Bamyan province.
''The vast majority of focus group participants from Ghazni regard migration to Australia as a livelihood strategy and coping mechanism to respond to social and economic needs.''
The report recommends the Australian government emphasise not only the safety risks from people smuggling but highlight the potential for repatriation and detention.
A spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection, which ordered the Wise report, said the government was in the early stages of working with the Afghan government on a public information campaign about the dangers of people smuggling and human trafficking.
Meanwhile, the only rescue boat the Australian Federal Police had stationed on Christmas Island as last year's asylum-seeker tragedy unfolded has been declared unsafe for use in even moderately rough weather by the government's leading safety authority.
The AFP has revealed it was forced to slap severe restrictions on the use of its fleet of LeisureCat 8000 patrol boats after the Australian Maritime Safety Authority ruled the vessels were too heavy and could only operate in smooth seas.

Monday, May 2, 2011

President Obama announced late this evening that U.S. forces had killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and recovered and identified his body. He said a team of Americans killed Osama in a firefight, suffered no casualties and avoided civilian casualties. Pakistan assisted in the operation.
"Tonight, I can report to the people of the United States and the world, the United States had carried an operation that has killed Osama Bin Laden, a terrorist responsible for killing thousands of innocent people," Obama said in a statement.
Others Al-Qaeda members also died. A U.S. helicopter apparently crashed due to mechanical failure but there were no casualities.
"Today, at my direction, the United States carried out that operation... they killed Osama Bin Laden and took custody of his body," the president said at a surprise news conference.
As the news spread on TV and social networks thousands of cheering people surrounded the White House. Thousands gathered at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.
It is a major victory for Obama and nations vicitimized by Bin Laden's terror. Although it probably won't shut down Al-Qaeda, he has been a symbol who will be hard to replace.
It also changes the equation in Afghanistan. It has been estimated that there are only 100 Al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, and therefore the U.S. could begin pulling troops out sooner.
Presumably the body was identified definitively, possibly with DNA.
CNN said Bin Laden, 54, was killed in a mansion in the city of Abbotabad, not far from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. A small team of Navy Seals shot Obama, CNN said.
He was born in Saudi Arabia to a wealthy family. After he finished college in 1979 Bin Laden went to Afghanistan to join the war against the Russian invasion.
He later became involved in other Islamic terrorist groups.
Wikipedia gives this report on his activities: "It is believed that the first bombing attack involving bin Laden was the December 29, 1992 bombing of the Gold Mihor Hotel in Aden in which two people were killed.[68]

It was after this bombing that al-Qaeda was reported to have developed its justification for the killing of innocent people. According to a fatwa issued by Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, the killing of someone standing near the enemy is justified because any innocent bystander will find their proper reward in death, going to Jannah (Paradise) if they were good Muslims and to Jahannam (hell) if they were bad or non-believers.[69] The fatwa was issued to al-Qaeda members but not the general public.

In the 1990s bin Laden's al-Qaeda assisted jihadis financially and sometimes militarily in Algeria, Egypt and Afghanistan. In 1992 or 1993 bin Laden sent an emissary, Qari el-Said, with $40,000 to Algeria to aid the Islamists and urge war rather than negotiation with the government. Their advice was heeded but the war that followed killed 150,000–200,000 Algerians and ended with Islamist surrender to the government.

Another effort by bin Laden was the funding of the Luxor massacre of November 17, 1997,[70][71][72] which killed 62 civilians, but so revolted the Egyptian public that it turned against Islamist terror. In mid-1997, the Northern Alliance threatened to overrun Jalalabad, causing Bin Laden to abandon his Nazim Jihad compound and move his operations to Tarnak Farms in the south.[73]

A later effort that did succeed was an attack on the city of Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan. Bin Laden helped cement his alliance with his hosts the Taliban by sending several hundred of his Afghan Arab fighters along to help the Taliban kill between five and six thousand Hazaras overrunning the city.[74]

In 1998, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri co-signed a fatwa in the name of the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders which declared the killing of North Americans and their allies an "individual duty for every Muslim" to "liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) and the holy mosque (in Mecca) from their grip".[75][76] At the public announcement of the fatwa bin Laden announced that North Americans are "very easy targets." He told the attending journalists, "You will see the results of this in a very short time."[77]

In December 1998, the Director of Central Intelligence Counterterrorist Center reported to the president that al-Qaeda was preparing for attacks in the USA, including the training of personnel to hijack aircraft.[78]

At the end of 2000, Richard Clarke revealed that Islamic militants headed by bin Laden had planned a triple attack on January 3, 2000 which would have included bombings in Jordan of the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman and tourists at Mount Nebo and a site on the Jordan River, the sinking of the destroyer USS The Sullivans in Yemen, as well as an attack on a target within the United States. The plan was foiled by the arrest of the Jordanian terrorist cell, the sinking of the explosive-filled skiff intended to target the destroyer, and the arrest of Ahmed Ressam."